All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

Friday, October 28, 2005

The Friday Furo Questus

Halloween Edition

By the pricking of my thumbs,Something wicked this way comes.

--From Macbeth (IV, i, 44-45)

The Questus TremoreIt's a rainy, dreary gray day here in Salt Lake City. Coupled with the date, the mind wanders to tales of ghosts and murders, stories of mysterious events and foul deeds - while the imagination conjures mist-shrouded streets and dark wildernesses, places that Doyle, Poe, or Lovecraft would feel comfortable.

What is it, exactly, about the unknown that facinates the human mind? Our facination with the supernatural? Simply our inablity to explain certain events? To substantiate them?

There are things that do not readily fit into the scientific catalog, things that technology can understand, but not explain. The Wasatch Ghost Investigator Society (see their website, ghostpix.com) has been studying ghosts for several years, and has found something truly amazing: Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). For lack of a better description, they are ghost voices, recorded on tape or digital recorders, and are picked up be recorders but are not heard by human ears when they are recorded. And not all of the voices they record are friendly.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. -- Joseph Conrad

Halloween is often a time when the evils of men are remembered, as well. Many of the acts of men defy the understanding of their contemporaries. One example that stands out in my mind is a mass murder in Florence, Montana. There, in a small hair salon in that small town, three older women were brutally murdered, for no apparent reason other than they were there.

Halloween historically been a time to remember evil, and to ward it off. The ancient pagan ritual of costumes and masks was designed to scare away any evil spirits ambling by. While the subsequent Disneyification of the holiday has done its best to remove the menacing undertones, the dark remains.

And for some reason the darkness facinates us. Perhaps it is our fear that drives our curiosity - or does our curioisty inspire our fear? I don't know. But it can be interesting.

It is just one sign of National Review's success that people think American conservatism is very old. It's not. In fact, even as we conservatives cheer the “wisdom of the ancients” and decry the modernity and even postmodernity of our ideological adversaries, American conservatism is arguably the youngest ideology on the block. Marxism, which still clings on like a tough carpet mold in a faculty lounge, is well over a century old.

The last one is an especially good read, a brief tour through the intellectual underpinnings of conservatism.